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Nativity   /nətˈɪvəti/   Listen
Nativity

noun
(pl. nativies)
1.
The event of being born.  Synonyms: birth, nascence, nascency.
2.
The theological doctrine that Jesus Christ had no human father; Christians believe that Jesus's birth fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and was attended by miracles; the Nativity is celebrated at Christmas.  Synonym: Virgin Birth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nativity" Quotes from Famous Books



... men march joyously to battle and death to drum and fife squeaking and rattling The Girl I Left Behind Me. It may be a long way to Tipperary, but it is longer to the end of the tether that binds the heart of man to the cradle songs of his nativity. With the cradle songs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster "is immortal bound," and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or the author ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... as to make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished for extreme minuteness of detail. "In the church of the Annunziata in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco, but finished 'a secco', wherein he represented the Nativity of Christ, painted with such minuteness of care, that each separate straw in the roof of a cabin, figured therein, may be counted, and every knot in these straws distinguished."—Vasari. His remaining works are much injured by scaling or the abrasion ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... authorities of Lincoln's Inn had already bestirred themselves to reduce the extravagances of dress and toilet which marked their younger and more frivolous fellow-members. "And for decency in Apparel," writes Dugdale, concerning Lincoln's Inn, "at a council held on the day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 23 Hen. VIII. it was ordered that for a continual rule, to be thenceforth kept in this house, no gentleman, being a fellow of this house, should wear any cut or pansid hose, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... sale, but eight others afterwards joined them, making in all thirty-five. The schoolmaster who was on his return to Woradoo, the place of his nativity, took with him eight of his scholars. Altogether, the come numbered ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... me, all that them hast done to thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... years, as domestic tutor to his son: and in that time particularly devoted himself to the Study of the Holy Scriptures; and being chosen assistant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the birth-day that completed his twenty-fourth year; probably considering that as the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... poked out. He's a awful star for females! hates 'em like poison! I suspect he's been worriting hisself into her nativity, for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the Third and Ninth House,—Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters, and such like. But it will all come right after he's transited. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... men." Moreover, he enjoined the officers to look to the good conduct of their troops; to repress swearing, gaming, riot, and plunder, and thereby to render them more deserving of victory. Accordingly, a fast of three days was proclaimed for the fleet, beginning with the Nativity of our Lady; all the men went to confession and communion, and appropriated to themselves the plentiful indulgences which the Pope attached to the expedition. Then they moved across the foot of Italy to Corfu, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... Sunday followed Sunday, trailing a fine movement, a finely developed transformation over the heart of the family. The heart that was big with joy, that had seen the star and had followed to the inner walls of the Nativity, that there had swooned in the great light, must now feel the light slowly withdrawing, a shadow falling, darkening. The chill crept in, silence came over the earth, and then all was darkness. The veil of the temple was rent, each heart gave up ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... intensity of their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... at length arrived when he was to perform what was then thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till noon, on the day preceding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various

... somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our waking conceptions do not match the Fancies of our sleeps. At my Nativity, my Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the Planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... is a drowsy blether from the flock, and far down the mesa the twilight twinkle of shepherd fires, when there is a hint of blossom underfoot and a heavenly whiteness on the hills, one harks back without effort to Judaea and the Nativity. But one feels by day anything but good will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped blossom-tops. So many seasons' effort, so many suns and rains to make a pound of wool! And then there is the loss of ground-inhabiting birds that must fail from the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... not so far as they did, but boldly stood at a little distance that I aen might sy it the better. This procession was on the 4 of June, a little after followed Sainct Barnabas day. Then came mid-Summer even, on whiclk the papists put on bonfires for John Baptists nativity. The day after, called S. Jeans day, was keiped holy ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... will teach you, that most of the wonderful stories patients and others tell of sudden and signal cures are like Owen Glendower's story of the portents that announced his birth. The earth shook at your nativity, did it? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... but a trifle; yet I will mention it to shew how ignorant those sottish pretenders to Astrology are in their own concerns. It relateth to PARTRIDGE the Almanack maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules; and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March [1708] next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever. Therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... now live in the body, you neither apprehend what this new birth is, nor what the perfect stature of it shall be afterwards. But truly while it is thus, you are but walking shadows, breathing clay, and no more. A godly man used to calculate the years of his nativity from his second birth, his conversion to God in Christ; and truly, this is the true period of the right calculation of life, of that life which shall not see death. True life hath but one period, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... matter was the opposite of that which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission [15] was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind. He walked upon the waves; he turned the water into wine; he healed the sick and the sinner; he raised the dead, and rolled away the stone ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... only a few delicious landscapes in the Ryks Museum. Still, they liked to hear that at Laren Corot's great disciple had found inspiration. Nowhere in the Netherlands are there such beautiful barns, each one of which is a background for a Nativity picture; and it was Laren peasants, Laren cows, and the sunlit and cloud-shadowed meadows of Laren which kept Mauve's brush busy ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... being. His face was smooth and childlike, yet dry and wrinkled, so that it was impossible to tell whether he was fifteen or fifty. A committee was said to have waited upon him, and with much apparent deference asked him as to his nativity, his age, and whether he was human or divine, married or single, man or woman. They said he answered sadly, "Alas! I'm no angel, but a married man, thirty-seven years old, from South Carolina. I have three ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... the invention of him that composeth it (for they have excellent poesy), but the subject of it is always the praises of Adam, and Noah, and Abraham; whereof the former two peopled the world, and the last was the father of the faithful: concluding ever with a thanksgiving for the nativity of our Saviour, in whose birth the births of all are only blessed. Dinner being done, the Tirsan retireth again; and having withdrawn himself alone into a place, where he maketh some private prayers, he cometh forth the third time, to give the blessing; with all his descendants, who stand about ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... 'tis gone: And, see, a threatening arm, an [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath [259] allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon [260] labouring cloud[s], That, when you [261] vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths; But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven! [The ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... stirred in her that was the gift of all the wandering years of that old Ulysses, her grandfather, to whom the beckoning lights of ships at sea were irresistible, and though she doted on the glens of her nativity, she had the spirit that invests every hint of distant places and far-off happenings with ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... depths of a greasy pocket, pulled out a roll of black pigtail, and with joy beaming from every feature, saw me tear from it many a goodly mouthful. We talked—he in Norwegian, I in a mixture of German and English; we chewed; we spat; we laughed and joked; we forgot all the discrepancies of age, nativity, condition, and future prospects; in short, we were brothers, by the sublime and potent free-masonry of tobacco. All that day my senses were entranced. I saw nothing but familiar faces, gulches, canyons, bar-rooms, and boozy stage-drivers; smelt nothing but whisky and tobacco ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... At times a tenderness of sentiment singularly beautiful is apparent in these too-much-forgotten works. We engrave, as an illustration of this, one of the compartments of the "Rosenkranztafel," preserved in the same locality, and representing the "Nativity." The Virgin in the stable at Bethlehem, piously rejoices in the birth of the Lord, and is about to wrap the sacred infant in the folds of her own garments, having no other clothing. She has reverently ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... factor a statuette of a child: besides that, I gave him an "Adam and Eve," a "Jerome in his Cell," a "Hercules," a "Eustace," a "Melancholy," and a "Nemesis;" then of the half-sheets, three new "Virgins," the "Veronica," the "Anthony," "The Nativity," and "The Crucifixion," also the best of the quarter-sheets, eight pieces, and then the three books of the "Life of the Virgin," "The Apocalypse," and the "Great Passion," also the "Little Passion" and the "Passion" ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer

... layers have been counted, or satisfactorily made out, upon one or two fallen trunks. It is probable that close to the heart of some of the living trees may be found the circle that records the year of our Saviour's nativity. A few generations of such trees might carry the history a long way back. But the ground they stand upon, and the marks of very recent geological change and vicissitude in the region around, testify that not very many such generations can have flourished just there, at least in ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... occupations, and nativity of the members of the legislature of Ohio, during the present winter, (1835-6,) and is about a proportionate estimate ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... palm-tree groves; why the other, rich and uneasy, from the rising of the light to the evening shade, subdues his woodland with fire and steel: our attendant genius knows, who governs the planet of our nativity, the divinity [that presides] over human nature, who dies with each individual, of various complexion, white ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... himself in his Correspondence with Erskine, ed. 1879, p.36. 'The author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright; and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and we will be content. The voting franchise exists, and it exists because it has been seized by force or because of some right antedating its sanction by law. Nativity does not confer it, because aliens exercise it; it does not arise from taxation, for many are taxed who can not vote and many vote who are not taxed. Ability to bear arms is not the test of the voting franchise, as many legally vote who were never able to bear arms, and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... that autumn brown and sere! Bless-ed the day and blest the year, Of his[C] nativity! Blest be the hospitals, which rise, Resultant of thy enterprise, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... leading up to the Virgin Mary with the Holy Child in her arms. Above all, in the apex of the windows, are the emblems used in prophecies of Christ's coming. The third window of the south transept shows the Nativity, with the Babe in the manger. Two windows in the choir are chosen with special reference to the regular service of the church. The first represents the appearance of the star in the east to the shepherds of Bethlehem, introducing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... bringing him thither. Now methought, while she was telling these things unto us, my heart burned withm ran. And I said in my heart, 'If this be true, I will leave my father and my mother, and the land of my nativity, and will, if I ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... following chapters we have the history of Abram and Sarah, their wanderings from the land of their nativity to Canaan, their blunders on the journey, their grief at having no children, except one son by Hagar, his concubine, who was afterwards driven from their door, into the wilderness. However, Sarah in her old age was blessed with ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... still assembled at Ripon on certain feasts, notably Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide, and the feasts of St. Wilfrid's death (October 12th) and translation (April 24th), to which was added later a feast of his nativity, observed on the Sunday after Lammas Day, and in the parish of Ripon only.[18] On St. Wilfrid's feasts the privilege of sanctuary was extended beyond the mile-limit to all who visited the mother-church, and the penalty for molestation without the limit was L6. On Easter Day ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... reign, his burial at Wynton. In the year one thousand xxxv, the coronation of king Harold the first; he in the fifth year of his reign was buried at London. In the year one thousand xl, the coronation of king Hardeknute, and in the second year of his reign, his burial at Wynton. From the nativity of Jesus Christ until the reign of Edward the second, king and confessor, there passed separately in England a hundred kings, and lx^{ty} and five kings; of whom Oswyn, Oswald, Ethelbert, Kenelm, Edward, Edward, were martyred; and Constans, Cedwall, Sebert, ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... general impression produced by the luxuriant growth of the soil, without entering into the individualities of the vegetation. In the more highly situated Montanas, where the cinchona is found in the place of its nativity, the gigantic orchidae, the numerous fern plants, the tree-like nettles, the wonderful bignonias, and the numerous, impenetrable complications of climbing plants, powerfully rivet the attention of the observer. Lower down, in the lighter forest ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... into believing his utterance to be the very voice of God. The struggle with Newman was not the struggle of faith with scepticism, but the struggle between two kinds of loyalty, the personal loyalty to his own past and his own friends and the Church of his nativity, and the loyalty to the infinitely more ancient and venerable tradition of the Roman Church. It was, as I have said, an aesthetic conversion; he had the mind of a poet, and the particular kind of beauty which appealed to him was not the beauty of nature or art, but ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... church which has some remarkable frescoes; these represent the murder of St. Thomas of Canterbury, with Our Lord revealing himself to the martyr; on the opposite side St. Michael is shown weighing a soul. In the nave is another picture of the nativity. A destructive fire, a few years ago, greatly damaged these and also the fabric of the church. Careful repair, however, has to a great extent restored the building to its original condition The altar consists of a seventeenth century tomb. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... alone. In autumn the cubs are nearly full-grown, and able to "take care of themselves." The "old father" now joins the family party, and all together proceed to the erection of winter quarters. They forsake the "home of their nativity," and build a very different sort of a habitation. The favourite site for their new house, is a swamp not likely to freeze to the bottom, and if with a stream running through it, all the better. By ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... and me, and, I recollect well, used to have us to tea at Cockenzie. Curious that I should long afterwards have an opportunity to pay back this attention to her son Robert. Once more, what a kind of shuffling of the hand dealt us at our nativity. There was Mrs. F. Cadell, and one or two young ladies, and some fine fat children. I should be a bastard to the time[385] did I not tell our fare. We had a tiled whiting,[386] a dish unknown elsewhere, so there is a bone for the gastronomers ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... birth, Thou, to whom thy Windsor gave Nativity and name and grave Heavily upon his head Ancestral crimes were visited. Meek in heart and undefiled, Patiently his soul resigned, Blessing, while he kissed the rod, His Redeemer and ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... school, Marco Palmezzano, the pupil of Melozza da Forli, a contemporary of Rondinelli, who influenced him to some small extent, is represented in the Accademia by two works in Sala II., the Nativity and the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (Nos. 189 and 190); in the Vescovado there is a Madonna and Child with four saints from his hand. Vasari says nothing of him, but only mentions his name, yet he has a good ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... who identify the Crag of Dumbarton with the Nemthur of the Saint's nativity, are faced by the unanswerable difficulty that though Nemthur may be the name of a tower, or may be the name of the district in which the tower stood, it cannot be the name of a town. The Saint in his "Confession" states that his ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... coloured nymph in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette. Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised that such a matchbox should have been tolerated. I suppose it had been left behind by some guest. I should myself select a matchbox with the Nativity, or the Flight into Egypt upon it, if I were going to stay a week or so at Graglia. I do not think I can have looked surprised or scandalised, but the worthy official who was with me could just see that there was something on my mind. "Do you want a match?" said he, immediately ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... innate, nature, unnatural, naturalize, nation, pregnant, puny; (2) denatured, nativity, cognate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... so at last we went down into the dust of the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look—in spite of ankle-bracelets and painted eyes—almost as guileless and happy as the round of angels on the roof of Fra Angelico's Nativity. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... France and England occurring about that time, the citizens neglected to rebuild Bon-Secours, and the capture of Ville-Marie by the English, which took place on the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, 1760, was perhaps justly attributed to public disorders and licentiousness (the colonists in many instances having lost their first fervor), and was also considered a just punishment for not having ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... that justifies all joy, and song is the expression of joy. The Gospel Songs all celebrate the Great Nativity. Birth and marriage are the occasions most sacred to mirth and music among men; and Christmas is at once the Birthday and ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... fiesta de la Virgen. Probably the festival of the Assumption, August 15, as this is generally considered the most important of the various festivals in honor of the Virgin, such as, for example, the Nativity of Mary (September 8), the Purification of the Blessed Virgin (February 2), and ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... 1603, made up of centuries seven and nine and years three, was expected by the astrologers to bring a great mutation in the order of our planet. The celestial signs were supposed to reassume the position they had occupied at Christ's nativity. Campanella, who believed in astrology, looked forward with intense anxiety to this turning-point in modern history. It is clear from the termination of the sonnet that he wrote it some time before ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... and of his intentions for the future, was brief, but not unsatisfactory. He said that, since his departure, he had been a seafaring man, and that, having acquired sufficient property to render him easy in the decline of his days, he had returned to live and die in the town of his nativity. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the mighty One was due. Exercising his perfect wisdom and power, Jehovah was overruling all things to the accomplishment of his purpose. Augustus Caesar, then the emperor and ruler over all Palestine, issued a decree that all the people should be taxed. Every one must go to the city of his nativity, there to be numbered and taxed. Joseph the carpenter, although a resident of Nazareth, was of the house of David, and hence must go to the city of David to be numbered and taxed. Naturally his espoused virgin would accompany him to that city. She likewise was of the house of ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... Traveller; Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... white sow ran out of an alley-way, followed by a twinkling litter of pink pigs. In the market-place we left our horses in the shadow of the monastery wall and entered, by a low door, the lofty, bare Church of the Nativity. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... I should not have weighed it an instant against the merest probability of escape. I knew if I could gain an hour upon my pursuers, I should be safe in the house of Dr. Pemberton, or even in that of Dr. Craig, another friend of my father's. I was comparatively at home anywhere in the city of my nativity, acquainted as I was with its streets and people, and I fully determined, when I found Sabra's avarice excited, to offer her as a reward this golden treasure, should she first place me in circumstances to gain ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... arrogance. Conscious that the great bond of union to her former companions was sev- ered, that the disdain of others would be insup- portable, she determined to leave the few friends she possessed, and seek an asylum among strangers. Her offspring came unwelcomed, and before its nativity numbered weeks, it passed from earth, ascending to a ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed as ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... justified by faith alone through the external justice of Christ. If this were true, good works would be superfluous, and all Christians would enjoy an equal measure of grace. Luther formally asserted this in his sermon on the nativity of the Blessed Virgin: "All we who are Christians are equally great and holy with the Mother of God."(1175) The Catholic Church rejects this teaching. She holds that justification is an intrinsic process by which the justice and holiness of ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... The nativity of the patients showed that nearly all countries were represented—Russia, Poland, Italy, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, England, Germany, Ireland, China, Hungary, Australia, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... up, that we only want such a Portion of Philosophy to account for what startles the Grossness of Sense, and to know that such Appearances must have their Cause in Nature, tho' we cannot readily determine where to fix it. This brings to my Mind, when Glendour was boasting in the Play, that at his Nativity the Heavens were full of fiery Shapes, and the Foundation of the Earth shook like a Coward; Hotspur reply'd humourously, Why so it would have done at the same Season, if your Mother's Cat had but kitten'd, tho' your self had never ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... which we ever saw, consisted of five hundred from the Ukraine. They had white faces, upward horns and tawny bodies. Placed in Hereford, Leicester or Northampton markets, they would have puzzled the graziers as to the land of their nativity; but no one would have hesitated to pronounce that they were ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... had done to relieve England of such an abomination. I rejoiced that more than seven years before I was born Clarkson and Wilberforce had brought about the abolition of this traffic from the land of my nativity and its dependencies. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... this country. If it were out of the way, our native insect-eaters of song and beauty could return to our lawns and orchards. The English sparrow is a nuisance and a pest, and if it could be returned to the land of its nativity ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... for the purpose of expanding a greater surface for the terminations of the placental vessels for the purpose of receiving oxygenation from the uterine ones; as the progeny of this class of animals are more completely formed before their nativity, than that of the carnivorous classes, and must thence in the latter weeks of pregnancy require greater oxygenation. Thus calves and lambs can walk about in a few minutes after their birth; while puppies and kittens remain many days without opening ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Captain, though a Creole or native Mexican, was entirely unacquainted with this part of the country. He had been born in it, as already hinted; but at a very early age had been taken to reside in the capital; and since then had never revisited the place of his nativity. He was consequently ignorant of the road leading to the paternal hacienda Del Valle—as also to that of Las Palmas—for both ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... considering whether or not he would grant the pardon for which the culprits had prayed." Then the Queen Regent enacted her share in the show. Turning to his Majesty "with all reverence, honor and humility, she begged that he would concede forgiveness, in honor of his nativity, which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... captured by a Confederate privateer. When I went to China I took two little girls with me, and returned with three. At the birth of the last daughter we named her "Rose de Chine," in order to identify her more intimately with the land of her nativity. Soon after her birth, several Chinese asked me: "How many girls do ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... Porter and Mr. Horace Russell and Porter, President of the New England Society, and all begging for a copy of Grady's[5] speech. Distant communities had got the names of the modern Horatii mixed. [Laughter.] In replying I had to acknowledge that my nativity barred me out from the moral realms of this puritanical society, and I could only coincide with Charles II when he said he always admired virtue, but he never could imitate it. [Laughter and applause.] When the Puritan influence ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... Mystery. The Visitation. Third Mystery. The Nativity. Fourth Mystery. The Presentation. Fifth Mystery. The Finding of the Child Jesus ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous

... the fact that Quirinius, or Cyrenius, mentioned Luke ii. 2, was first governor of Syria from the close of the year 750 of Rome to 753. (See Merivale, iv. p. 457, note.) Our Lord was born under his administration, and according to the date we have assigned to the nativity, the "taxing" at Bethlehem must have taken place a few months after Cyrenius entered ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... lighted with silver lamps. The true Cross was kept in the church, but the nails she brought home as the most precious gift she could carry to her son. She also beautified and made into a church the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and she built another church on Mount Carmel in memory of Elijah. From her time it became a habit with devout persons to go on pilgrimage, to worship at the holy tomb and in the Cave of Bethlehem; and a new ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... windows that opened on a verandah, in the Southern States termed piazza; this being but little elevated above the level of the outside street. Besides Don Ignacio and his daughter, but one other individual occupied the house—their only servant, a young girl of Mexican nativity and mixed blood, half white, half Indian—in short, a mestiza. The straitened circumstances of the exile forbade a more expensive establishment. Still, the insignia within were not those of pinched poverty. The sitting-room, if small, was tastefully furnished, while, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... applied to for a decision of disputes, and sometimes wagers,[A] respecting the place of his nativity, and finding they sometimes operate to his disadvantage: Begs leave to give this public information—that he was born in Nottingham-west, in the State of New-Hampshire—in which state he resided until sixteen years old; after which time, he ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... "On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... was a lad, and gave him water, This is the lad that shall enjoy the crown, for which we strive. When I was in France, I heard from one Dr. Pena, that the Queen Mother, who was given to curious arts, caused the King her husband's nativity to be calculated, under a false name; and the astrologer gave a judgment, that he should be killed in a duel; at which the Queen laughed, thinking her husband to be above challenges and duels: but he was slain upon a course at tilt, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands, and eyes of eager enthusiasm, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... more refined, than in Correggio himself. Those pensive, tarnished, silver side-lights, like mere reflexions of natural sunshine, may be noticed indeed in many another painter of that day, in Lanini, for instance, at the National Gallery. In his "Nativity" at the Brera, Procaccini of Verona almost anticipates Correggio's Heilige Nacht. It is, in truth, the first step in the decomposition of light, a touch of decadence, of sunset, along the whole horizon of North-Italian art. It is, however, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... the thrill, and he lost his humorous poise: the heart-breaking seriousness of it all now came to his realization. How he wanted to draw her to him, forgetting all the differences in nativity, the social and political conditions which ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... Old men in danger of falling into pupilage. The conduct of Thrasybulus 163. The mischiefs of following a patron 164. Praise universally desired. The failings of eminent men often imitated 165. The impotence of wealth. The visit of Scrotinus to the place of his nativity 166. Favour not easily gained by the poor 167. The marriage of Hymenaeus and Tranquilla 168. Poetry debased by mean expressions. An example from Shakespeare 169. Labour necessary to excellence 170. The history of Misella debauched by her relation 171. Misella's description of the life of a prostitute ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... record, did the same legendary form of historic composition continue to subsist. On the other hand, as a striking antithesis to this Grecian condition of history, we find amongst the Hebrews a circumstantial deduction of their annals from the very nativity of their nation—that is, from the birth of the Patriarch Isaac, or, more strictly, of his son the Patriarch Jacob—down to the captivity of the two tribes, their restoration by Cyrus, and the dedication of the Second Temple. This Second ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... from the Serapeum, and the emperor's astronomer, had come to her, to ask her on what day and at what hour she was born. They also inquired concerning the birthdays of her parents, and other events of her life. Timotheus had informed her that the emperor had ordered them to cast her nativity. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... are the traces alike of its impotence and of its malice which have survived to our own times. It is a memorable circumstance that it is precisely those very texts which relate either to the eternal generation of the Son,—to His Incarnation,—or to the circumstances of His Nativity,—which have suffered most severely, and retain to this hour traces of having been in various ways tampered with. I do not say that Heretics were the only offenders here. I am inclined to suspect that the orthodox were as much to blame as the impugners of the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... at Harvard and Yale, and while Princeton was almost a Southern college, an education in the North did not seem to nationalize the Southerner. On the contrary, as in the universities of the Middle Ages, groups were formed in accordance with nativity; and sectional lines, though effaced at certain points, were strengthened at others. There may have been a certain broadening of view; there was no weakening of the home ties. West Point made fewer converts to this side and to that than did the Northern wives of Southern husbands, ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... and less rapidity than Signorelli usually gave to predella work, while retaining the same breadth and freedom of general effect. "The Annunciation," with its beautiful perspective, is one of his best compositions of this subject, in which he is always so successful. "The Nativity" recalls that of the Uffizi predella; "The Adoration of the Magi" is a fine rendering of the scene, but the two last are the most interesting as well as being the best in workmanship. In "The Flight into Egypt" the painter has evidently been influenced ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... house in which Christopher Columbus was born remains unidentified, and the year of his birth undecided, no such ambiguity attaches to the place and year of Vespucci's nativity. Above the doorway of the mansion which "for centuries before the discovery of America was the dwelling-place of the ancestors of Amerigo Vespucci, and his own birthplace," a marble tablet was placed, in the second decade of the eighteenth ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... much in accordance with the practice of his models of the preceding generation), entitled Flowers of Sion, and consisting, like the sonnets, of poems of various metres. One of these is noticeable as suggesting the metre of Milton's "Nativity," but with an alteration of line number and rhyme order which spoils it. Yet a fourth collection of miscellanies differs not much in constitution from the others, and Drummond's poetical work is completed by some local pieces, such as ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns: It relates to Partridge the almanack-maker; I have consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift

... consideration or protection, has likewise been infrequent. The first instance is an enactment of Massachusetts in 1776,[70] relating to the appointment, on certain occasions, of guardians for the deaf, especially those deaf "from their nativity," together with other persons—which is probably the earliest statutory reference to the deaf in America. A later example is an enactment in Georgia in 1818,[71] and still in force, providing for the appointment of guardians, on somewhat the same order as that which we have indicated, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... Cuban, except the fat, sleek, well-groomed, superbly mounted ones in "khaki," who loaf around headquarters with high-ranking shoulder-straps. These are all imported from the United States. They comprise the few wealthy ones of Spanish descent, who are renegade to their own nativity, and are appealing to the good people of the United States to establish them in their status of master of peons without any overlord who can exact his tithes for ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... principals, I do not mean to indicate their nativity; for I suppose no Southerner ever taught a Northerner anything until Bull Run, when the lesson was, not to despise one's enemy, but to beat him. Nor do I intend to call them pro-slavery men in the obnoxious sense. Like many good men of the day, they depended largely on Southern patronage, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... old age. My nativity, I am told, was not heartily welcomed, for the family was already within one of a dozen, and the means of support were not superabundant. I arrived at Middlebrook, New Jersey, while my father kept the toll-gate, at which business the older children helped him, but I was too small ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... pictures ever strove to be so, who through surpassing sacrifice became great, who lived, if ever man has, the wonderful Christ-life, now sleeps the sleep of peace, the last peace, under the sod of the landscape of his nativity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... eminent artists have made the painting of animals a specialty, and among them are such world-renowned names as Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. Moreover, in the numerous pictures of the Nativity we often find the homely details of the stable introduced. One of Rubens' paintings of this sacred and favorite subject, which hangs in the gallery of the Louvre, represents two oxen feeding ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... said, with an air of weighing the matter judicially. "While he did not amount to much, it is true—that is, physically—I'd hardly say he was as bad as all that. He did take an active interest in student athletics. And he had some talent. He once wrote a Nativity play that brought him quite a bit of local appreciation. I have heard, also, that he was slated for the head of the English department, only the affair happened and he resigned and went away. It quite broke his career, or so it seemed. At any rate, on our side the shield, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London

... name in runic characters in four poems: Christ, Elene, Juliana, a story of a Christian martyr, and the least important, The Fates of the Apostles. The Christ, a poem on the Savior's Nativity, Ascension, and Judgment of the world at the last day, sometimes suggests Dante's Inferno or Paradiso, and Milton's Paradise Lost. We ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... propitious shews itself, And with full beams of majesty, the sun, Hath bless'd its fair nativity; when Heaven, Brave soldiers, and the cause of kings, Calls on the spirit of your loyalty, To chastise this rebellion, and tread down, Such foul ingratitude—such monstrous shape, Of horrid liberty, which spurns that love— That fond maternal tenderness ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge

... of Bells.—There is a story, that a person had long been absent from the land of his nativity, where in early life, he had assisted in setting up a singularly fine peal of bells. On his return home, after a lapse of many years, he had to be rowed over some water, when it happened that the bells struck out in peal; the sound of which so affected him, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... page, Great chieftain of a daring age, The stripling soldier burns to see The spot of thy nativity; His ardent fancy can restore Thy castle's turrets, now no more; See the tall plumes of victory wave, And call old valour from the grave; Twang the strong bow, and point the lance, That pierc'd the shatter'd hosts of France, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield

... cab and drove to a street near the Nativity, where he soon discovered the house he was seeking. It was a small wooden villa, and he was struck by its attractive and clean appearance; it stood in a pleasant little garden, full of flowers. The windows looking on the street were open, and the sound of a voice, reading ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... for them; but I hardly believe they will succeed, and you, my poor dear, will probably have to jump into the cold water of diplomacy; and the boy, unlucky wight that he is, will have a South-German accent added to his Berlin nativity. * * * As far as can now be foreseen, I shall not be able to get away from this galley for two or three weeks, for, including Silesia, that amount of time would probably be necessary for it. But much water will flow down the Main before then, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke



Words linked to "Nativity" :   renascence, modification, Christian theology, live birth, alteration, theological doctrine, death, rebirth, delivery, posthumous birth, change, reincarnation, nascence



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